Stateline Canberra

Right to die?

A small but growing number of Canberrans want the right to die. Catherine Garrett reports.

THELMA HUNTER, PHD: I don't want to suffer. I don't see why I should suffer.

DAVID SWANTON, PHD, EUTHANASIA ADVOCATE: I would like the option, I may not take it up, I've a right to life, but that's not a duty for life.

DR ANDREW FOOTE, ACT AMA PRESIDENT: I would personally find it very difficult as a doctor to become involved in ending someone's life.

CATHERINE GARRETT: So tell us about the living will that you've had drawn up, what's its purpose?

Well it's to, it is to specify the physical conditions under which you do not wish to be kept alive.

CATHERINE GARRETT: For 83-year-old Belconnen academic Dr Thelma Hunter this document is central to her life. It directs the terms of her death should she become physically and mentally incapacitated.

For example, advance disseminated malignant disease, severe immune deficiency, severe and lasting brain damage due to injuries, stroke, disease, a number of items like that. Now I take this along and I have taken it along to any new doctors that I happen to go to and indeed one of them declared herself very glad indeed that I had given it to her because she said this is what the hospitals now want to see.

CATHERINE GARRETT: And her living will may offer Dr Hunter the most possible control over her death given Canberra, like the rest of Australia, has no "right to die" legislation.

And should her wishes be denied, Dr Hunter says she will die by her own hand.

THELMA HUNTER: Because I've had such a full life, because I have been physically so fortunate, and because I still am, I don't want that to change. I don't want to go out of this life a shuddering old, frightened person. I'll be old and frightened anyway but maybe I won't be shuddering.

CATHERINE GARRETT: The decision has been a painful one and come after much soul searching.

THELMA HUNTER: Basically I feel it's my right, it's my right to do so. I also feel that dying must be a very unpleasant process. There can be very few people who actually die peacefully. I don't want to suffer. I don't see why I should suffer.

I don't feel facile about it at all. I'm scared. I think I've decided how I will do it. I'm not 100 per cent sure. I'd prefer to have a pill.

So I'm on the list for trying to make our own.

CATHERINE GARRETT: And Thelma Hunter is not alone. An increasing minority of older Australians are taking such steps to allow them to commit suicide before illness and a loss of independence overtakes.

The recent Four Corners program "Final Call" tracked seniors travelling to Mexico to acquire barbiturates like Nembutal to take as a last resort. While some have set up backyard labs to make their own suicide pills.

WOMAN (in a backyard lab): Boil, boil, boil and trouble.

CATHERINE GARRETT: Dr Hunter says she could have joined one of the overseas groups who recently travelled to Mexico, but fear got the better of her.

THELMA HUNTER: It's pretty scary thing to do to go to a country to pick up an illegal drug and smuggle it through the customs.

DAVID SWANTON, PHD, EUTHANASIA ADVOCATE: Well at the moment without a legislative regime, that's what's happening. We have Australians going overseas to buy drugs. We have Australians making drugs near Canberra, making drugs illegally, elderly Australians making drugs for "just in case". And, we have Australians going overseas to die.

CATHERINE GARRETT: Local voluntary euthanasia advocate Dr David Swanton says the cause is about choice and dying with dignity.

DAVID SWANTON: In the Netherlands the rate of assisted suicide has actually dropped once a legislative regime was put in place. In other words people know that that drug is there just in case. They don't need to go and hang themselves or something terrible like that.

DR ANDREW FOOTE, ACT AMA PRESIDENT: We're going to get better and better at keeping people comfortable so they can have quality of life and dignity in death. But I would personally find it very difficult as a doctor to become involved in ending someone's life. But at the end of the day if it becomes legal, and there are safeguards, I would expect some doctors would be persuaded by the argument.

CATHERINE GARRETT: In March, voluntary euthanasia supporters gathered in Canberra to mark the 10th anniversary of the so-called "day of shame" when the Northern Territory's Rights of The Terminally ill Act was overturned by the Federal Government. It had been the first successful piece of voluntary euthanasia legislation anywhere in the world. It was also, say those in its favour, tightly controlled and responsible.

THELMA HUNTER: You have to get at least three doctors saying that you're terminally ill. You had to get a psychiatrist saying you're not depressed.

DAVID SWANTON: I have a right for life. That's not a duty for life. And if I want to end that early because I'm in unbelievable pain and palliative care does not provide suitable options - and palliative does provide very good options for 95 per cent of patients but for those other 5 per cent, there's no option for them.

DR ANDREW FOOTE: There's a whole branch of medicine that's devoted to end of life - palliative care. And just in the 10 years that I've been in clinical medicine, pain relief has just, is just unrecognisably better than it used to. Most doctors in their training are brought, are trained and their whole focus is on saving life and alleviating pain. So a number of people feel significantly that euthanasia is a significant departure from that traditional training and would favour the - keeping someone very comfortable in their last days.

CATHERINE GARRETT: The ACT's AMA President believes the euthanasia debate needs to be readdressed by politicians and admits within his own profession, opinion is emotive and divided.

DR ANDREW FOOTE: At the recent national AMA conference with the election of the new president, we were sitting around breakfast just discussing the euthanasia situation and there were eight doctors and there were basically eight different opinions. Individuals will do what they feel they have to do. It's not something I would do.

CATHERINE GARETT: Dr Thelma Hunter has her mind made up. If life is no longer bearable and she can't access drugs, she says she will find a way.